


The Unicorn Incident

by sdwolfpup



Series: The Fable Verse [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Masturbation, Present Tense, Single POV, Unicorns, followed by probably too much schmoop, lots of snark, not even a hint of angst here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:13:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22187632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sdwolfpup/pseuds/sdwolfpup
Summary: Catelyn needs a unicorn horn. Jaime knows where one is. Brienne is the only virgin she trusts to go with him. Time for a sexually awkward two-person road trip!
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: The Fable Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604713
Comments: 165
Kudos: 482





	The Unicorn Incident

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sick for the last day and a half so I wrote 14k words of unicorn AU. As you do. Spurred by sisabet asking me months ago: "What if Jaime and Brienne have to capture a unicorn for reasons so they need a virgin because of course but also they are mad attracted to each other." This story is my answer. Unbeta'd!

“I need a unicorn,” Catelyn Stark begs. “And you're the only one who can do it.” 

There's a lot to unpack in those two seemingly simple sentences and Brienne opts for the part on top: “how do you know I'm a virgin?” 

No, wait, that hadn't been the part she meant to ask, but she had and now she's blushing and Catelyn – her _mentor_ ; her best friend's _mother_ – is giving Brienne a _really?_ look that could melt the mythical Wall. Maybe not that mythical, if unicorns really exist. Fable Hunters may believe all those things are real (not the Wall, it's rumored to be huge and made of mile-thick ice and you can't just hide that no matter how big the North is), but the much more rational and, frankly, saner world of Fable Academics had come to the stunning conclusion of “ehhhhhh....maybe?” in regards to unicorns. 

The two groups are usually at odds in their determination of what had existed, what still exists today, and what's just childish nonsense. The only things they agree on are dragons (definitely used to exist but not anymore) and giant ice spiders (definitely not real, which the Academics are grateful for and the Hunters seem to regret, which is dumb; who wants giant ice spiders to actually exist?). But unicorns, now that would be an interesting find. 

But it doesn't matter because Catelyn is still gingerly trying to explain why she's one hundred percent certain her top FA is a virgin and Brienne is trying to slowly sink all six and a half feet of herself into as compact a ball as possible. 

“Never mind,” Brienne finally mumbles, saving them both. “I meant why do you need a unicorn?”

“Bran still hasn't come out of his coma and I'm tired of waiting,” she says and Brienne feels a little wave of sadness thinking of Catelyn's second youngest child, probably her favorite because he's the most like her, bookish and serious and a surprising amount of stealth trouble, but also he's been in a coma for months after he fell out of a tree looking for a roc and Catelyn has been relentless trying to find a way to help him. It doesn't surprise Brienne that she's come to this solution. 

“You know finding an actual unicorn is...unlikely,” Brienne starts and there's that look again. 

“I know that better than most, Brienne,” she says tightly. “But I have a solid lead.”

“You do?” 

“Yes.” Catelyn looks cagey all of a sudden, a look that Brienne very much does not like because she's already certain what, or rather who, the lead is and-

“No,” Brienne says and Catelyn sighs as though every burden in the world is on her shoulders alone and Brienne respects the woman's grief, but. “No,” she says again. 

“Please, Brienne, hear me out.”

“ _No_ ,” Brienne repeats and realizes she sounds like some sort of very negative cuckoo clock but she doesn't care. “I am not going out into the wilderness with _him_.”

“He's the only person who's ever even seen a unicorn and he's willing to take you to where it happened and leave you there.”

“To die?”

“To get my son a cure. He says it's only a couple days hike into the Haunted Forest-”

“Oh come on,” Brienne groans, “it's not even in the Wolfswood?”

“Don't you think we would have found a unicorn if it was in the Wolfswood?” Catelyn is glaring now, angry and desperate and Brienne already knows she's going to give in to her mentor's wishes and she hates how willing she is to make her own life uncomfortable for others but then again why shouldn't she? It's not like she's ever lived at ease in the world so she's not really missing anything. 

But multiple days alone with Jaime Lannister might finally be that bridge too far.

“Can't he just draw me a map? Mark it on a GPS?” Brienne asks, already knowing the answer to the latter. Electronics don't work in Fable Zones. Once you step into those spaces it's like you've stepped into a separate world, which is one of the reasons Brienne loves them so much and why random tourists are strictly prohibited. There was that incident twenty years ago, when she was a child, where the entire family of Aerys Targaryen went missing and only Jaime Lannister, the local teen who'd taken them into the Fable Zone in the Kingswood, had returned. Brienne doesn't remember much from her childhood besides the stories she escaped into but she does remember Jaime Lannister's sullen face as he stood next to his father, Tywin, while Tywin explained why his son was not at fault and oh, yes, access to all Fable Zones was being shut down immediately and only licensed Hunters and Academics would be able to enter, no further questions thank you. 

That decree was why Brienne became an FA in the first place; she was not about to be kept out of Fable Zones because Jaime Lannister really screwed the pooch that one time. 

She would rather die than let him know that, though. He's just as likely to take it as a compliment as the complaint she intends it to be. 

“Brienne, I know you two have had some complicated interactions in the past-” Brienne snorts so loud that Catelyn pauses, ramps up The Look to twelve, and continues, “-but he has promised to lead you straight there, guide you around until you get the unicorn's tracks, and then let you handle the collection.” 

“I'm surprised a unicorn would come within a thousand yards of that man,” Brienne sniffs. 

Catelyn frowns. “He's very handsome but you know he isn't really known for-”

“That's not what I meant!” Brienne yelps and somehow it's worse that Catelyn knows he's handsome instead of that she knows the status of his sex life. “I meant because he's so...” she waves her big hands around at a loss for the right word that sums up how arrogant, disdainful, petty, and obnoxious Jaime Lannister is. There is no word except: “ _Jaime_.” 

“Yes,” Catelyn says like she knows exactly what Brienne means. “But he's also our only lead and my son is in a coma, Brienne. _Please_.” 

That “please” rings loud in Brienne's head two days later when Jaime Lannister shows up at the Winterfell Fable Research Institute and pokes his head in the door of her small office and says “Miss me, wench?” 

Brienne shuts her eyes and prays to the gods that she does not murder the man because while a unicorn's stance on virginity is very clear, it's less certain what that sort of moral stain might do to her ability to attract one. Although any unicorn worth its salt would understand why she did it. 

“I forgot you even existed,” she says and Jaime laughs like she means it as a joke. 

“Genial as always I see,” he says and he throws himself into the chair in front of the desk across from her and he just sprawls like he's some sidhe learning how to use a chair and possibly the chair arms are really for legs but maybe one leg should be on the floor in case this is how chairs actually go, oops look how my crotch is center stage. He looks amazing while he does it, of course, long and muscular and golden – skin, hair, sense of his own self – and his eyes are unfairly bright and she hates every last stupidly handsome inch of him. 

“I'm very good at reading maps,” she says, because there's no way he wants to spend days alone in her company either. The last time they parted – the Griffin Incident as Brienne files it away in her head – she'd said “they wouldn't even welcome you to the seven hells” and he'd said “only because they'd be too afraid you'd somehow follow me there to harangue me for all eternity” before they split ways and that had been a step up from the Giant Incident previously and the Manticore Incident before that. Their years of acquaintance were mostly just years of Incidents when they both happened to be following leads in the same places at the same times and Jaime was there to hunt and bring home parts to sell and Brienne was there to actually do useful work like cataloguing and illustrating and preserving knowledge. Except the first Incident, which she does not care to think about because it's the reason he thinks she's only amused by him and not genuinely annoyed. She had been 18 and on her first solo research mission. No eighteen year old could be expected to hold their own against a full-grown, ravenous direwolf, though she was very close to doing just that until Jaime stepped in and, as he tells it, saved her. She knows she would have had it eventually. But that one instance of chivalry (though he'd skinned the creature and taken the pelt and parts for himself, so how chivalrous could it be?) has made him unbearable since, even though it's been seven years. 

“You can't map your way to a unicorn, wench. You have to feel it.” He wiggles his fingers like he's performing a magic trick. “You need me for that.” 

“I feel things,” she protests and he lifts one perfectly arched eyebrow and she blushes because of course she does, it's like he has a button secreted away that he can push and make her blush on command. “I'm just saying that neither of us wants to do this so don't feel like you have to come with me because of some antiquated sense of noblesse oblige.” 

“Who says I don't want to do this?” he asks, feigning hurt, and Brienne sighs and shuts off her computer. 

“I'm driving,” she says and he shrugs. 

“I'll get my things.” 

His things end up being a well-used hiking backpack with a sleeping bag rolled so efficiently on top that Brienne cannot help being a little impressed, a big satchel that she knows holds his containers and carving knives, and a sword. Guns don't work in Fable Zones, either. Brienne has her own backpack and sleeping bag, her own satchel with her research tools and sketch pad, and her own sword. He had given her that sword after the Direwolf Incident and though she hates having something of his, it's too good of a weapon to get rid of and besides she had tried to give it back to him after the Aurochs Incident and he'd just tersely said “it's yours” and refused to take it and she isn't an idiot, she can't afford a sword this good on her own. 

She calls it Oathkeeper, because she likes how that sounds and that was her favorite story as a child, but she certainly has never told _him_ that. 

“You still have my sword,” he says when they're laying their weapons down on the backseat of her beat-up old Jeep. 

“It's mine,” she says firmly, because he had told her it was. He doesn't usually say anything about the sword and she narrows her eyes now. “You can't have it back, you said it was mine.” 

He looks...weird for a second and then he smirks. “I'm an idiot sometimes.” 

“You are,” she agrees and he laughs again, that sound like he thinks she's being funny on purpose. She gets in the car and starts it up and considers briefly just driving away with his backpack and his sword and leaving him at WFRI but he gets in too quickly for her to do it. 

The drive to the Haunted Forest Fable Zone Gate 1 is eight hours but it feels like a million. Jaime talks nonstop through the first hour, about himself and what he's been up to and it can mostly be summed up as: traveling the world, killing creatures and making money. He doesn't mention Cersei once, for which Brienne is grateful after the aptly-named Harpy Incident, when Brienne discovered Jaime was much closer to his stepsister than a man should be and also that he _definitely_ isn't a virgin anymore. 

She realizes she hasn't seen Jaime with Cersei for at least a year. Not that she looks for him, he just takes up attention whenever they're in the same room together and Hunters and Academics have so many joint meetings and parties and conferences that even though she and Jaime should by all rights never see each other outside of the Incidents she sees him in passing more than she likes. He doesn't notice her, even though she's taller than almost anyone in either group, but she expects that. Brienne is big and ugly and shy and she has perfected the ability to disappear. When Sansa gently scolds her for that she always tells Sansa it's because it puts the Fables at ease, but Brienne has been disappearing since she was a girl. The Fable thing is just a bonus. 

Anyway Jaime used to appear at these things with Cersei all the time, even after the Harpy Incident, but he missed the big annual Fable Zone convention two years ago (Hunter-Gatherers Con as it's colloquially called, which Brienne has to admit is pretty clever; she'd rather be a Gatherer than an Academic because she thinks it's more true to the work they actually do in the field, but that ship sailed fifty years ago so she suffers quietly) and then at last year's he came alone and he's been alone at every smaller gathering since. She wonders if he's really done with Cersei and hopes that he is – she's his _stepsister_ so it's not exactly incest but it's not great. Not that it matters who Jaime Lannister takes anywhere. Brienne goes alone to all of these things, has since she was twenty when she learned up close and personal that a beard isn't just facial hair. Renly wasn't mean about it, he was just careless. He's always careless. That's how she ended up in the Direwolf Incident in the first place. Brienne is never careless, she is cautious and responsible and always gives others the benefit of the doubt. 

Except Jaime Lannister. Who deserves every doubt and zero benefits. 

Hour two of the car ride proves that true when he realizes he's been talking the whole time and she has not, and he starts asking her questions. 

“How's Renly?” he starts, and it only goes downhill from there. 

Jaime knows she was involved in the Direwolf Incident because Renly had given her bad data and assurances and not equipped her appropriately and she doesn't blame Renly for any of that – she should have done her own preparations and research before she went into the field, she's learned that lesson well. But Jaime? Jaime blames Renly for every last second of it. He has blamed Renly for seven years even though Brienne has tried to argue, beg, and nearly punch him out of it. She doesn't know why he even cares; neither of them was badly injured and he did come away with a fortune in direwolf parts. The beast had been _huge_ , bigger than anything on record. But now the two men can't be in the same room for longer than five minutes before Jaime drives Renly out of it (Jaime never leaves first, not ever, and Brienne knows he would rather die than let Renly think he's beaten him; Jaime would be on the ground, dehydrated but grinning victoriously because he didn't go to the kitchen to just get a drink of water while Renly was still there; the man is terrible but she has to admire that commitment to pettiness).

After Jaime runs through his litany of anti-Renly rhetoric he moves on to disparaging Academics in general and the Starks in particular until Brienne can't grip the steering wheel any tighter without breaking it so she nearly shouts, “if you hate them so much why are you even helping Catelyn?”

Jaime pauses and she can feel him watching her but she does not look away from the Kingsroad stretching straight in front of them. “I'm not a monster,” he finally says and because she's not looking at him she might think he was really offended but she knows he's smirking again, his pink, perfect lips tilted just so and so she just glares out the windshield and drives a little faster. 

Hour three he turns on the radio and sings to every song, even when he clearly doesn't know the words and so he makes up terrible alternates that are mostly different ways of singing about sex without actually saying sex. He has a nice enough voice that she can't really make fun of without seeming like she's actually the petty one. She especially hates him during this hour. 

Hour four they stop at a gas station and stretch their legs and he comes back with a bag filled with junk food and a container of soda that a pixie could swim in. “If you drink all that we'll have to stop ten times on the way,” Brienne complains. Jaime takes a big, long suck on his straw, his eyes holding hers the entire time as she watches his lips around the plastic, his cheeks hollowing, his short hair burnished by the mid-afternoon sun. She flushes and turns away and he at least chokes on his soda a little when he laughs at her. 

He mercifully sleeps through hours five and six and then wakes up so desperate to pee he makes her pull over to the side of the road while he's unzipping himself as he's in the Jeep still and Brienne shouts, “Don't pee in my car!” and she screeches to a halt just as he's shoving his hand in his pants and throwing open the door and she is stuck in that moment as he's turning when she thinks she sees, maybe, but no it's got to be only his thumb, his knuckle, the curve of his wrist because if it is anything else she's going to die and also she's worried that even _seeing_ the penis of an unrelated man might mess up the whole unicorns-and-virgins thing. 

Also she doesn't think penises are that smooth and...sizable. She has never done a study of penises, so she doesn't know for sure.

When he gets back in he exhales like he's just outrun a charging bear and tilts his head back against the headrest and lolls his head her way and she thinks for a moment that he could be a sidhe, the kind that seduce men and women alike just by the sheer power of their beauty, leading them blissfully unaware to destruction and doom. 

“Almost had to piss into my cup,” he says, grinning, and she makes a disgusted noise and starts driving again. 

The seventh hour passes mostly in silence while he reads some journal. Halfway into it he makes a high little humming noise in the back of his throat, short and curious: “hm!” Brienne ignores him and then a minute later he says, “huh!” He is the least subtle man on the planet. Two minutes later: “oh!”

This goes on for ten minutes until finally through clenched teeth she says, “ _What_?”

Jaime looks up and she meets his eyes and he's all false innocence. “Sorry, was I making noise?” 

She does not push him out of the moving vehicle and she thinks she deserves some sort of medal for that. 

The last hour he says, “This is actually really interesting,” like they've been arguing the point for the entire drive when Brienne has said as little as possible. She doesn't respond but Jaime doesn't need a second person to talk. “This says that the translation from old Westerosi is really 'purity' and not 'virginity.'”

“Oh?” she offers because she is kind of curious. 

“What they meant was pure of heart, not pure of body. I mean the arguments about masturbation alone prove that a pure body is much harder to define than a pure heart.” She feels his eyes lock onto her like a laser sight. He has one on his crossbow, she's seen it in action. “Have _you_ masturbated?” he asks.

She nearly drives off the road. “That's none of your business!” she shouts as she wrestles the Jeep off the bumpy shoulder and back onto the asphalt. It's dark now and there haven't been any other cars since the last motel, which is good because she doesn't want to die in a car crash right after being humiliated by Jaime Lannister. 

“I think it rather is in this case,” he says and he sounds pleased by this state of affairs, that he needs to know about the state of her affairs. “If you're not truly a virgin, then what are we even doing out here?”

She curses Catelyn long and silently in her head and stares so hard at the road that she imagines she can make out each individual piece of gravel kicked up from cars past. “I am a virgin,” she grits out and the whole top half of her body is on fire and Jaime is still looking at her. 

“No penises in vaginas, sure,” he says and she chokes a little. “Sorry, swords in sheathes? Battering rams in castles? What would make you most comfortable?”

“Never talking about this again,” she manages and he makes a little “tsk, tsk” sound that is all disappointed professor and she imagines him in tweed and glasses and suddenly the bottom half of her is getting pretty warm, too. 

Jaime is a jeans and canvas pants kind of a guy, t-shirts that are always more tight than they need to be, scuffed-up hiking boots and the occasional hat when, she assumes, he thinks he doesn't look roguishly handsome enough. The idea of all that muscle and athleticism constrained in a tightly buttoned up tweed exterior is...well, it's not helping her focus, that's for sure.

“What about oral sex, have you done that?” 

It is too dark outside and far too dark in the Jeep, the soft glow from the display the only real light in here, the headlights the only real light outside and she thinks the word intimate does not truly get at this strange, liminal space people fall into when they're on a long drive at night, alone in the world where time and reality can't touch them. She thinks this and then she thinks it can't hurt to answer his question because it's for Catelyn's son so she says, “No, I haven't done that.” 

“Now we're getting somewhere,” he says and he doesn't sound as pleased. He doesn't sound mad or disappointed or angry, he sounds like he's thinking about something he doesn't want to think about but he can't stop. She used to have thoughts like that about Renly, so she recognizes it. “Anal sex?” he asks in a voice that seems lower than it was just a moment ago and she cannot look at him now she just sits with his voice and his questions for science and she shifts a little in her seat because there's an ache between her legs she can't settle. 

“No,” she says softly. She sees the movement of his head, he's nodding, he's not writing anything down but she knows he's paying perfect attention because he hasn't stopped _watching_ her. 

“Frottage?”

Brienne frowns, the thickness of the air easing a little. “What's that?” she asks. 

“You don't-” he exhales and it sounds a little rough. “It's when two people rub against each other while wearing clothes.” 

“Like...sexually?”

“Yes, wench,” he whispers, “sexually. To orgasm.” 

“Oh.” Orgasm isn't innately a sexy word but the way his mouth shapes it she feels like it is, like he's speaking the act itself. “No, not that either.” 

“Has anyone...” he takes a breath and it's noticeable even over the sound of the engine, “has anyone besides yourself ever given you an orgasm? Fingers? Toys?” His voice is reedy and she assumes it's because he feels sorry for her and he's trying to hide it because apparently Jaime Lannister actually isn't a complete monster. 

But it's still hard to tell him the truth because she's twenty-five and she knows the answer _should_ be yes, yes, someone, somewhere has decided that her body is worthy of attention even if just for an hour but the real answer is no. She shakes her head because she can't even say it out loud and he makes this kind of groaning noise in his chest that sounds half-desperation and she doesn't understand it at all. Is he mad at her? Disappointed? She wants to ask but she feels like she should look at him when she does and she cannot do that. 

“Is that all?” she asks instead and he twists in his seat so he's facing her and she wishes he would stop staring but she also likes it because when Jaime stares he isn't judging her looks, he's looking for her responses, he always has. It's the main reason she puts up with him at all, because when he looks at her, he sees her. 

“You never answered my first question,” he says and his voice is the night around them and there's a clenching between her thighs, deep, like she feels the pressure of his words there. “Have you masturbated?” 

This is the answer she least wants to give because the answer is yes – she's twenty-five and interested in sex, of course it's yes – but she hasn't thought about Renly while she does it for years. She's never thinking about Renly when she puts her fingers on herself and discovers she's already wet and Jaime isn't asking her that but he'll know it if she answers his question. But he's going to know anyway and it's for Catelyn so she nods once, a halting jerky thing and he kind of shudders and turns away abruptly in the seat and neither of them says anything else until they get to the Fable Zone gate. 

As soon as she parks Jaime hops out of the Jeep and slams the door shut harder than it needs and stalks over to the guardhouse. She sits in the truck and briefly, stupidly, presses her fingers against her center and gasps when the seam of her jeans slides against her clit. Jaime gestures at the Jeep and she quickly puts both hands safely back on the wheel and ignores the persistent pressure from below. 

He stalks back to the car around her side and she hurriedly rolls down the window. The moon is three-quarters full, bulging at the seams, ready to burst forth. It makes his hair shine as he leans in, frowning. “They won't let us in until morning.” 

“Well what are we supposed to do until then?”

“He doesn't care as long as we don't do it here.” 

Brienne glares out the dirty windshield at the guardhouse. “You showed him our overnight permits?”

“Give me a little credit,” he snaps and she looks at Jaime, past his handsome face and his gleaming hair and she sees he's unusually agitated. 

“What do you think we should do?” she asks, because she knows action settles him, she's seen it happen often enough in the field. 

“There's a motel a few miles back we could go to. Or we could just sleep in the car by the side of the road.” 

“There's not enough room for both of us. You're too big,” she says and as soon as she says it she thinks of his thumb-hand-wrist in his pants again and she wonders what color her red cheeks are in the moonlight. 

Jaime just rolls his eyes, thank the Seven, and says, “Then the motel it is.” 

There's plenty of room for them at the motel so they each get separate rooms, though they're right next to each other and she can hear Jaime's TV on through the thin walls. She uses the too-small shower and gets clean enough and by the time she's dressed in her shirt and panties, lying in the just-big-enough bed with the lights off and the faint hum of the air conditioner, Jaime has turned off his TV. Except then she hears a noise that makes her think maybe he didn't turn it off so much as change the channel. Is he watching an animal show? There's grunting for sure and then a gasp that is definitely Jaime and- 

_Oh._

Pure of heart, pure of heart, pure of heart she tells herself and it lasts about ten seconds before she's got her hand down her underwear and her fingers curling familiar through the wiry hair there, down between her folds and she figures she's masturbated to thoughts of Jaime before and this won't technically be him giving her an orgasm because he doesn't even know it's happening. His bed must be flush against the wall they share because he says, “fuck” quietly, desperately, but it's very loud in her head. She is wet faster than she's ever been in her life as his moans pick up and Brienne is biting her lip so hard her jaw hurts but she's got to be quiet or he might stop and she thinks if unicorns do judge based on moral purity over bodily she might be in trouble. He gasps again, louder, and she's so close already and she thinks of his hands on the hilt of his sword, of his sharp eyes over the sight of his crossbow, of what his cock – and oh she likes that word better than penis, it feels like she can taste it – might actually look like and then she's coming hard, her body bowing off the bed as he makes a kind of reluctant “unhhh” behind her head that he bites off with a muttered curse. 

Brienne breathes and breathes and breathes and wonders if he can hear her now, too, and so she swallows and tries to be quiet. There's no noise from Jaime's room and she's tingling all over, her muscles loose after tightening so hard just moments before. She hears the sound of water, realizes he's probably cleaning himself off, wonders if he was fully naked or just had his underwear down, enough to put his hand around himself like earlier. She does not move a muscle until she hears his bed creak as he gets into it. 

“Goodnight, wench,” he says and it's loud enough she can hear it but not loud enough she thinks she is supposed to. She is confused and warm and unsettled as she falls asleep.

* * *

Jaime is Jaime the next morning: cocksure, stuck-up, looking like he stepped out of an Adventurer's Magazine. When she leaves her room he's already there and when he says “Did you grow even more overnight?” she feels a flare of annoyance so familiar it puts her at ease. 

“Shut up,” she mutters but his smirk is the one he always has which means he didn't hear her and she doesn't have to disappear in the Land of Always Winter, leaving poor Bran in a coma for the rest of his life. Good all around. 

They grab complementary muffins from the motel lobby and make their way back to the gate. Cars also don't work in the Fable Zones so the guard unlocks the chained lot, empty right now, which is unusual for early summer but The Haunted Forest has never been the most popular Fable Zone mostly because it's so far north and it has so few actual Fables. Brienne thinks it's full of them, in point of fact, but they're all just better at hiding here than in the other Zones. Even Catelyn disagrees with her on that point, but sometimes you just have to believe. 

She parks her Jeep, pats the dashboard before she hops out, and grabs all her things. 

“I've got water,” she says and Jaime shakes his head. 

“There's plenty of water here, don't weigh yourself down.” 

She takes a Camelback full anyway and he frowns at her. “You can never be too prepared when it comes to water,” she admonishes him and he silently mimics her talking in the most sarcastic way possible and she thinks it's incredible that she has ever thought positively of him for even a second.

When they walk into the Zone, she feels it, even though there's no physical barrier they can see or even touch, the air feels _different_ on this side, promising and mystical, a pool of magic untouched by time or decay. Brienne has been to nearly every Fable Zone in the world, but she's spent the most time here and the small one in the middle of Tarth. 

“So,” she says, her voice hushed. She's usually alone in the Fable Zones so talking in one feels like she's transgressing. “Which way?”

“You tell me,” he says, loud, so loud it startles her. He eyes her skeptically. “You said you can feel things.” 

“If you're going to just make me do it, why did you even come along?”

“To protect your maidenly virtue, of course. And for entertainment. I have a bunch of great Gatherer jokes.” 

“Ugh,” she says starting off towards the middle of the Zone, figuring they can begin there and spiral outward. A unicorn has never been officially seen, though during hour one of the longest car ride ever he said he has definitely seen one. “I don't know why Catelyn believes you,” she says after a few minutes heading vaguely northeast. 

“I don't either,” he says and she looks over her shoulder to find he's not smiling. “But it's good that she does because in this case I'm telling the truth.” 

“Tell me about what you saw,” Brienne commands, and he does. There's not much to the story ultimately; he was here hunting shadowcats and he'd gone deep into the forest, thinking he saw a pale flank. Usually shadowcats are black with white stripes, but there were rumors the reverse existed and Jaime followed it excitedly. Track, track, track, follow, follow, follow, then poof, he startles a real live unicorn out of a glade. He stayed for three more days trying to find it, but there was nothing. 

“Wow,” she says when he's done. 

“I know, right? An actual unicorn. This is big stuff, wench.” 

“No, I mean 'wow I can't believe that's the story Catelyn believed.'”

His excited face drops and he looks almost hurt before he storms off ahead of her. “Dour, ignorant, stubborn-” he's muttering and she sticks her tongue out at his back. 

They wander what feels like aimlessly for an entire day. Jaime eventually gets his normal mood back and hounds her relentlessly about her research for the past year and whether she's ever planning on presenting at Hunter-Gatherer Con. 

“Only if I have something worthwhile,” she says. 

“A unicorn would do it.” 

“If you don't kill it first, yes.” 

“I swore to Catelyn I wouldn't. You know you have to milk the horn, not cut it off.” 

Ah yes, milking the horn. The one piece of the puzzle that even if they _do_ find a unicorn Brienne's not sure she can do. How will she get near enough to touch it? How will she...milk it? It sounds vaguely sexual and Brienne is not interested in getting to second base with a fantasy horse. Or any horse or other non-human creature. Men only, which is a shame because she's seen the way some women look at her. She and Sansa only met because Sansa flirted with her at a holiday party. 

No, unfortunately she is a penis-desiring-only kind of girl. Brienne laughs a little at herself and Jaime glances back at her and smiles and she flushes and looks away. It's a shame he's so relentlessly awful because sometimes he has such a kind smile she wonders what it would be like if he was like that all the time. 

Unbearable, she knows. She's seen the razor sharp line of his jaw soft and wanting, for Cersei, that one time, and that is the reason she stopped thinking of Renly when she masturbated. 

Eventually the forest shadows start growing deeper and they silently both come to a stop at the next clearing they enter. They don't talk as they set up their sleeping bags, as Brienne clears space for a fire and Jaime collects twigs and branches. By the time the fire is crackling and they're eating Brienne's rehydrated meals, she feels almost like they're in sync. Usually they run into each other, hiss and spark and fight, and then part again. This is the first time they've spent any concentrated time in a Fable Zone together. It's almost comfortable. 

“So about the purity thing,” Jaime says, ripping the comfort away. 

“Can we not talk about this for one night?”

“No, we cannot. You should be taking notes, wench, this could all go into your report. Of course you'll have to be Subject A, the virgin-who's-masturbated who finds the unicorn. You're in a very unique position you know.” 

She does not want to ask but she's tired and the fire is warm so she says, “Why?”

“Because you can do an unprecedented set of experiments to determine once and for all what sort of purity they mean.” 

Brienne ponders that for a second and then the meaning of what he said lights up like a rocket in her head and- “I will do no such thing with you!” she gasps and he looks...something for a moment before laughing loudly and too sharp. 

“I wasn't offering,” he sneers and she knows the patchy blush spreads down her neck and over her shoulders bare in her tanktop but she can't stop it. 

She packs away her minimal trash and gets into her sleeping bag and neither of them say anything as the fire burns low. Brienne wakes in the middle of the night to find the fire has burned out and she shifts a little in her sleeping bag so she can look up at the stars. She and Jaime are sleeping in a circle of tall, silent sentinel pines, and their smell is tangy in her nose, with the faint memory of the campfire smoke underneath. The stars are incredible up here, brighter even than Tarth, diamonds spilled across a black velvet sky. She's looking for constellations when she hears a noise, from the other side of the campfire. It's a soft, repetitive movement, fabric moving, a smothered intake of breath. 

Brienne goes utterly still. He's masturbating _again_? she thinks. What is his _problem_? Is this just a thing Jaime does, masturbate every night before he can sleep? Or is he just really turned on by the outdoors? 

She should move, cough, do something that makes it seem like she's on the verge of waking so he'll stop and she can go back to sleep for real. 

She does not do anything except move her fingers at infinitesimal speed until they're at her waist, and then under the tight button of her jeans. Her hand gets stuck there, too big to fit any further and she's not going to be able to unbutton and unzip them enough that she'll be able to get to herself, so she tries on top, over her clothes. _Frottage_ she remembers, and she stifles a truly hysterical laugh just in time. Jaime's breathing is getting louder, though, and he lets slip a moan that has her pressing her fingers hard against the seam of her jeans, nearly shaking in relief when the fabric rubs rough against her clit. _Yes_ , she thinks, _this will work._ This is idiotic at best, truly disastrous at worst, but she does not stop the steady press of jeans to body and she turns her head into her opposite shoulder as her orgasm comes on slow and deep and sparkling as the night sky while Jaime whispers something sharp but garbled and sighs his orgasm quietly on the opposite side of the fire. 

There's more noise now, he's cleaning up somehow, it sounds like the rasp of leaves which he probably picked up when he was gathering wood. She hopes he didn't get any poisonous ones and snorts before she can stop herself and he goes absolutely still. 

Heart pounding like a rabbit's, Brienne changes the snort into a snore and makes some appropriately lip-smacking-but-still-asleep sounds that are convincing enough he grunts and gets back to his cleaning. She falls asleep again with her fingers caught in the vee of her legs and dreams that they're Jaime's.

* * *

In the morning he's so cranky Brienne almost says, “why don't you jerk off again if you're going to be so moody?” but stops herself just in time. If she's lucky, they'll find the unicorn today, or at least a sign of it and he'll leave her on her own to track the creature and hope that purity is strictly a penis-in-vagina thing. 

She is not lucky. What she is is annoyed, teased, and prodded by a man so aggravating that the only way to describe him is by using his own name. There is no one like Jaime Lannister and for that Brienne is extremely grateful. More than one and the world would be doomed. 

“If you would just shut up for five minutes,” she says in the middle of the day, “we might have better luck finding the unicorn.” 

“Unicorns don't care about noise,” he scoffs.

“You're so sure of that.” 

“I am,” he says like she'd asked him a question, but she hadn't, he just hates letting anyone else have the last word. “They only care about purity.” 

“Not this again,” she mutters. 

He stops and the afternoon light is turning golden and it turns him golden and she is adding tallies to her 'Jaime Lannister Is Secretly A Sidhe' list even as he gives her a long, considering look. 

“Why _haven't_ you had sex?” he asks and she bursts into loud, obnoxious laughter, startling something small in the bushes nearby. Jaime's head jerks back and his face does this thing she cannot describe except to say he's drinking her in, gulping down the sound of her laughter and she stops because she's not sure he should have it. “I'm not being funny, wench.”

“Not on purpose,” she says, “but really, Jaime, you're smarter than that. Surely you know.” 

He looks affronted. “Truly I don't,” he says and he means it and she thinks maybe she would let him have her laughter again, if he surprised it out of her. 

“Look at me,” she says gesturing down the very long span of her body. 

“I am,” he says and the sun makes his eyes glint gold and green and warm, warmer than they usually are. 

“Men aren't lining up to have sex with a woman bigger than they are.” 

“Then you haven't met the right men.” 

That was probably true. She doesn't get out much and mostly all the men she knows are Stark-adjacent. “Plus, there's my face,” she says, not very loudly because even though Jaime hasn't made fun of her looks in years and years, admitting you're ugly to the most beautiful man in Westeros isn't exactly a pinnacle of self-esteem. 

“I like your face,” he says and he sounds like he means it but she knows what he really means: he's _used_ to her face. Her ugliness is expected now. He doesn't have to worry she'll throw herself at him, or him at her. She's safe. Jaime Lannister does not like safe, his entire life proves that. She is the last thing that would attract him, so he doesn't mind being around her. 

“You're being obtuse,” she says and he looks like he wants to say more but he just shakes his head and they continue on in silence. 

That night as they're sitting around the fire he asks, “But you want to?”

Brienne blinks because she's kept up with Jaime for years but sometimes he still outruns her. “Huh?”

“Have sex? You want to have sex?”

She's red as the flames now, instant and complete over her whole body and her feet seem the only safe place in the world to look. Jaime is sitting near her on the log they found, though, so she sees his boots, too, watches one tap impatiently while he waits for her answer. 

“Yes,” she says softly, like she's admitting to something weak and vulnerable. It makes her feel that way, because it's such an impossible dream. She knows at some point she's going to have to hire a prostitute because she doesn't want to live her whole life not even knowing. 

“Good,” he says, like she's settled something but she has no idea what that could be and he turns the talk to tales of the most outrageous Fable story they both have and he wins, of course, because Brienne is careful and responsible and safe and Jaime is not. 

Which is why that night when she gets in her sleeping bag she unbuttons and unzips her jeans before they're both asleep, ready with an excuse if he asks but he doesn't, he's already turned over and half-asleep from the sound of his deep breathing. She tries to stay awake, and she is very very certain this is affecting her purity score, but just as she's almost asleep she hears him move, the rustling of cloth, a long sigh from his side of the fire and then the rhythm she's getting more familiar with than she ever thought possible. Fuck her purity score, she thinks, as she moves her fingers in time with the pattern of his hand, as she lets his moans lay gently over her, sinking into her skin until she imagines the wind is his breath on her hair, her fingers are his questing and sliding into her shocking wetness. She gasps, just a little, and immediately stops all movement but his breathing is loud and he's already lost so she joins him, her eyes scrunched tight, falling into darkness when he does.

* * *

They keep this up for two more days. 

Jaime wakes cranky, he walks it out, they spend surprisingly pleasant afternoons discovering they have a truly remarkable amount in common – and the things they disagree on they do so with a kind of fierce joy – and then Jaime masturbates on one side of the fire and she masturbates on the other and she's the only one who knows. 

On the fifth day she wakes up crankier than he is, not because she's mad but because surely he must _know_. How does he not know? She's got to trick it out of him. Except Jaime is quick and she is slow and the tortoise and the hare has never been more appropriate than when applied to the two of them. 

She rallies herself with the knowledge that the tortoise wins in those stories as they start off. 

“How much longer are we going to try this?” she asks mid-morning. “I don't think they exist.” 

“That depends on how many days you'll feel comfortable with telling Catelyn you tried to help her son.” 

Brienne grimaces. She might never spend enough days for that. But even Catelyn wouldn't want them to spend more than a week out here, surely. She's probably worried she hasn't heard anything yet. 

“How many days do you want to be out here?”

He shrugs, casual and careless. “As long as it takes. I've got nowhere else to be.”

“No bounties to hunt down?”

“Oh I'm sure there's been calls since I left, but it's not like money is an issue.” 

“If you don't need the money, then why do you do it?” she asks. It's a question she's wondered for a long time. Jaime could easily have been an Academic on his father's money and his quick mind. 

They're walking side by side, as they've done for the last day. It feels more comfortable to be next to each other. They eat next to each other every night, too. The only time they're apart is when they're going to the bathroom or sleeping. Or...well. 

“I made a promise,” he says and it's something serious and deep and she lets it sit between them, accepting it into their space and letting him decide if he wants to say more. Eventually, he does. “To Rhaella Targaryen,” he continues. “Before she died protecting her children. Protecting me. The Fables aren't _safe_ , Brienne,” and his name on her tongue startles her. She can't recall him ever saying it, except the first time they'd met over the body of the direwolf when they'd both been bloody and chests heaving, the corpse steaming in the chilly air, and he'd asked, “What's your name, girl?” She'd told him and he'd said, “What the fuck were you thinking, Brienne?” and that was it, the only time they'd gotten along crushed beneath his disdain from then on. Except now, she supposes. They're getting along now. 

“I never said they were,” she responds and he snorts. 

“No but you're always so dreamy about them. Such a tall woman, no wonder your head is in the clouds.” 

She smiles a little, because it's admittedly kind of funny, and he smiles back. Then he's suddenly not smiling anymore because he's stepping closer and he looks nervous and determined. 

“What are you doing?” she whispers and he tilts his head a little, just so the light lingers lovingly on his high cheekbone, highlights the gold of his brow. He is the most beautiful thing she's ever seen in or out of the Fable Zones, a sidhe for certain, and then he kisses her and he's most definitely a man. 

She keeps her lips closed at first as he presses his tenderly against them, and then he tugs a little at her lower lip with his teeth and she sighs into his eager mouth and he's swallowing the gasps she's making as he presses harder. She has never been kissed either, she wants to tell him, but he already seems to know because his mouth is teaching her, nipping and sucking, his hands on her shoulders, gentler than she would have thought. Then his tongue swipes across hers and she is suddenly on fire and she wraps her arms around him and he moans so deliciously into her mouth she feels it in her belly. 

“Jaime,” she gasps when he moves his mouth to her jaw, her ear, her neck. “Jaime.” 

“Yes?” he says into her heated skin and his hands are not nearly so gentle now as they come up under her arms and pull her close. He's stronger than he looks and he looks like he can wrestle a shadowcat. She's taller and bigger and uglier than him but he doesn't seem to care. 

“Purity,” she says because she's still responsible and he laughs a little against her collarbone and she regrets being the way she is for a moment, until she thinks of Catelyn's poor son in the hospital. 

“It's just kissing,” he says, and he shows her, trailing a whole, wet trail of them over one shoulder and then the other, like he's making the acquaintance of every single one of her freckles. 

“Good point,” she says and she slides her hand around the perfect curve of his ass and pulls him closer and then he makes this _noise_ against her that sounds both like he's in pain and that he loves it and he stops moving, frozen against her. His cock (she shudders a little thinking it) is hard against her leg. 

“This was a mistake,” he says and now she goes still where she's nuzzling against his soft hair. He smells like the woods and campfires and sweat. She wants to bottle it up and pour it on every piece of clothing she owns. “Not like that,” he adds, like she's spoken her fears aloud but of course she's obvious to him, she always has been. “Just...you really do need to remain a virgin just in case and that's going to be difficult if I lay you down and have sex with you right here.” 

Brienne shivers a little when he pulls away. “You want to have sex with me?” she breathes. 

His lips are red and glistening wet, his cheeks are flushed in beautifully pink circles, and he gestures rather aggressively at the very obvious erection he's now sporting. 

“Oh,” she says, and she giggles and covers her mouth in embarrassment. Brienne didn't even know she could make a sound like that. 

“After we find the unicorn I will be happy to show you,” he says low and shadowed as the forest. “But we better find it fucking soon.” 

They walk next to each other that afternoon and their pinkies brush and every time they do she feels butterflies in her stomach. They do not find the unicorn and by the time they're done with their dinner and the campfire is burning low Brienne feels like maybe she should tell him what he surely must already know. 

Jaime climbs into his sleeping bag and says, “good night, wench” in the same tone he said it back at the motel. 

“I know what you do at night,” she says and immediately winces because it sounds like either a horror movie title or an accusation or both. 

“Do you?” he murmurs. 

“I...I do it, too,” she says and she's gratified by the way he inhales so abruptly, like he's trying to take the whole of the idea into his lungs. 

“Do you?” he says and he does not sound blasé now. 

“Were you going to do it again tonight?” she asks, her voice unexpectedly high. 

“Yes.” His is very low, they are opposite sides of the teeter totter, holding each other in place. “Were you?”

“Yes.” 

She hears him shift and he says, “Then unzip your pants, wench, we don't need to fake sleep.” 

Brienne's fingers are trembling as she undoes her pants, slides them a little down off of her as she's been wanting but unable to do. It lets her open her legs a little more in the sleeping bag, let's her add a third finger to soak up the wetness. She hears Jaime moving on his side of the fire. 

She brushes her fingers over her clit and it's sensitive already, eager against her skin. 

“I'm wrapping my hands around my cock,” Jaime says and Brienne goes still. He's going to talk? That's...she isn't sure how she feels about that. 

“Can you please be quiet?” she asks, politely, like she's trying to watch a movie and he's being a bit of a bother. 

“I was trying to be sexy,” he says and she thinks she's hurt his feelings. She wants to kiss him but he's too far away so she sits up, intending to apologize but he's got the flap of his sleeping bag wide open and there he is, half-naked and...sizable. He's got himself in his hand, the red tip thrusting out of the circle of his golden fingers. Lannister colors, she thinks nonsensically and she watches him stroke himself long and slow and she feels the pull in her own body. 

Brienne chances a look at his face and he's biting down on his lip and staring at her with eyes hungry and fierce as a shadowcat. She has never done it but somewhere primal inside she knows she could straddle him and ride him until they were both slick with sweat and spiraling down. She doesn't know how to milk a unicorn but she knows how to milk him and unbidden she laughs and he goes very still. 

“What?” he asks. He's definitely hurt. 

“It's not you,” she says hurriedly. “I was just thinking about...about milking a unicorn.” Now he looks a little repulsed and she waves her hands in denial. “No! No, not what you're thinking at all. Not. No. Ew.” 

His hand drops away and then it's just his cock hard and long and curled up against the fluff of hair on his belly and she squeezes her hands like she's holding it in them. 

“If you're going to watch me, then I should be able to watch you, too,” he says and she discovers there are additional layers of turned on and embarrassed she can be, stacked on top of each other like a cake. 

“What about the unicorns?” she says and he groans. 

“They don't care. What does it matter if you're looking or not, if you're doing it at all?”

He makes a very solid case. She would like to watch him, for sure, though there's a chance watching his face as he orgasms might ruin her for other men for life. But there are no other men in her life and likely won't be and a Fable Zone is nothing if not a place of possibility so she nods. He stands quickly, shirt hanging down his waist, his cock still just there, demanding her attention. 

What Brienne really wants is to touch it, because the skin looks soft. 

He drags his sleeping bag over to her side of the fire, right next to hers and lays it down. 

“Oh, I didn't think-”

“I want to see you,” he says and he's hoarse and ragged. The moon is full now and she could see him before but now that he's right next to her it's like he's made of it, silver and gold and stunning. There is a look she has never seen before in his eyes and it nearly undoes all of her good intentions before he looks down at her hairy mound. “I want to see your cunt,” he says and she shudders because she's heard that word but never like _that_. “Take your pants off, Brienne.” 

She obeys, sliding her pants all the way down her too-long legs, tugging them off of her feet and balling them up at the bottom of her sleeping bag. She starts to pull the top of her sleeping bag over her legs but he reaches out to stop her, his wrist brushing her knee and she feels that like an electric shock. 

“I want to see all of you,” he says and she's red in the moonlight but she just nods and then lets her hands fall uncertainly to her thighs. 

“How...how should we do this?”

He turns so he's facing her, his legs parallel to hers – long, but not as long – his feet at her hips and her feet just past his hips. “Stay sitting up,” he says and he's not looking at her cunt at all, he's just watching her face. She wonders, briefly, if her cunt is ugly, too, but she doesn't really want to know. Let her have one dream, at least, that she's not totally unappealing. “That way we can both see.” 

They sit there in the moonlight and the dark, both breathing hard, and she says, “You start first.” 

Jaime grins, a knowing, taunting thing that slices through her before dropping away in a hiss as he grabs his cock again and strokes. It is mesmerizing, the way his strong hand slips up and over the head of his cock, the way the length glistens with his own wetness when he pulls it back down. She is captivated until he stops and says, “You, too, wench.” 

Right. They're doing this together. She wants to watch his face, because she suspects once he gets going he will close his eyes and his head will fall back to expose the hard bump of his Adam's apple, a place she would happily feast for days. But she can barely move her hand even just watching him stroke himself so she stares vaguely at his stomach and touches her fingers to her clit. 

“Spread your legs wider. I want to _see_.” He is not commanding, he is begging, which is why she does it and his stare is like a physical thing. “Gods,” he moans and his hand speeds up. 

Brienne doesn't really have a special routine for masturbation. She likes to stroke her fingers in long paths when she's wet, gathering it on her fingertips before she moves to her clitoris. How long she does depends on how horny she is, or how lonely or how tired. Sometimes – usually, she is forced to admit here in the dark, after Incidents with Jaime – she dips one or maybe two fingers inside herself, to the first or even second knuckle, though she's usually too tight and uncertain to go further. 

She slides her whole finger in her cunt now and gasps at the way the walls grab and pull her deeper and Jaime growls, “fuck, Brienne, you must be so wet,” and she looks up at him and he's somehow watching all of her: her fingers and her cunt and her face all equally as desirable. 

He must have terrible night vision, she thinks. At last, a flaw. 

“Can you fit a second finger?” he asks and his voice is so strained he sounds like he's trying to push a boulder up a mountain. “Are you wet enough? Wide enough?” 

She's never tried but then this is a night for new experiences so she presses a second thick finger in beside the first and she is stretched but it feels good and she moans out loud and Jaime's hand stutters sharply in his steady rhythm. 

“Do that again,” he pleads. 

Brienne has never made much noise while masturbating. There seems no point and except for the occasional extraordinary session (again, she hates to realize, the ones she accompanies with new Jaime fantasies), she doesn't feel the need. She is all need tonight and it feels good to release it through her lips. She widens her legs and brings the fingers of her other hand to her clit and she groans, “ohhh,” and Jaime makes a noise like she's twisting his hand backward a little too far. Brienne glances at his face and the moonlight is drenching him and he is, he is- Her orgasm hits her like a train, sudden and out of nowhere, crashing and tumbling from her cunt outward, and it's her who throws her head back and she cries out, louder than she's ever been and Jaime says, “yes, gods, yes, that's it,” and then he cries out, too and she feels a little of his semen hit her leg. 

Her cunt is pulsing around her fingers still as she slides them back out, shuddering at the sensation. She feels like if anything touches her she will fall apart completely. Jaime is gasping and making a few last, slow strokes and she regrets she couldn't control herself enough to see his face when he came, but watching him return to himself is pretty good, too. It's like he's gone fuzzy and soft and he slowly sharpens, becoming more real. 

I will watch him next time, she thinks, and then smiles. He smiles lazily back at her, reaches for her hand, the one that had just been two fingers deep in her cunt, asking, “May I?” 

She holds her hand out to him and he leans in enough to press it to his face and he breathes her in and then licks the small webbed v between her fingers and she is ready for next time to be now. He kisses her palm, tender, like it's not all picked callouses, and then pulls a small towel out of his sleeping bag and gently wipes her leg clean before using it on himself.

This, she realizes, is a problem, because Jaime Lannister has been many things but he's never been sweet, not to her. People are not sweet with Brienne. Her friends are kind, Catelyn is caring, her father is concerned, mostly, but sweetness is like a spun sugar decoration: too fragile for a girl her size. Jaime doesn't seem to agree. 

It's a problem because underneath the arguing and the disagreements and the sniping back-and-forth, she likes him. She _likes_ -likes him. Brienne has always secretly known this and it is absolutely her worst character trait but she can't help it. Ever since she had her back to a rock and her front to the biggest direwolf seen in modern times and she was fifty-fifty on whether she'd survive, and Jaime had come out of the shadows like sunlight beaming down, his sword a deadly arc, and he had – she admits it to herself in her head only – saved her. It is the cheesiest, most damsel-in-distress bullshit, she _knows_ this, but it doesn't change the fact that he did it and she likes him for that and so much more.

She likes him a little more when he drags his sleeping bag around so their heads are together and he lies down and tucks one arm under his head. “Time for sleep, wench,” he says, cheerfully, here on her side of the fire. 

“Uh,” she says. She pulls her pants up and lies down next to him and they're each secure in their own sleeping bags, not even touching, but he's right there and she can feel him looking at her in the night. She wonders if this side profile of her is better or worse, if the stark moonlight makes her look even a tenth as magical as it does him. She hopes not. She likes that he sees her as she is, now more than ever. 

“Good night, wench,” he says in that same voice again.

“Good night, Jaime.” 

He shifts and his arm comes down between them, outside of his sleeping bag. She puts her arm next to his and he moves so they're touching all along from elbow to hand, and when he wraps his fingers around hers, gently, like she might be spun sugar, she knows she is doomed.

* * *

When they wake the next morning Jaime is irritatingly cheerful. He leaps out of his sleeping bag, does a lap around the fire, goes off to relieve himself, comes back and yanks the top flap of her sleeping bag down and beams at her, bouncing on the balls of his feet. 

“Up and at 'em, wench. It's a beautiful day!”

It is a beautiful day but she doesn't want to tell him that. 

They set off, Jaime chattering about everything and she's not in a bad mood, exactly, she's just afraid to be in a good one. If they're both cheerful then that means something, doesn't it? It's up to her to maintain their years-long equilibrium by being the stoic one. 

Brienne lasts about an hour in her resolve because they stumble on a small ring of fairy flowers and Jaime exclaims over them like he's never seen fairy flowers before (he has; they saw some literally yesterday) but she's so charmed by it that she gives him a smile that starts at fond and ends somewhere way more dangerous than that when he looks up at her from where he's kneeling and returns it. He stands and comes to her and says, “Kiss me by the fairy flowers, wench,” and she does. His lips are as soft as petals, his tongue as sweet. It feels like the Fable Zone is watching them as she snakes her arms around his neck and enjoys not having to lean down when he lifts himself up on his toes to match her. He's tall enough, and that makes her belly do this weird little swoopy somersault.

He puts his hands on her hips and pulls away. “You know what they say when you kiss by fairy flowers, don't you?” 

She's smiling in a way she doesn't usually because it shows how big and crooked her teeth are but he doesn't seem to mind. He's got a week's worth of beard growth and his jaw is soft and she recognizes that look from the Harpy Incident. Jaime is ageless like this, pure and perfect and she is super duper doomed. 

“What do they say?” she whispers, because it's the Fable Zone and she's still Brienne, even if she's Brienne with new feelings. 

He grins and tugs her hand and they start walking again. “Look it up when we get back,” he says.

Back. Back to the real world. That makes it easier for her to be the sober one for the next several hours until they stumble out of the forest to a crisp, clear lake whose beauty takes her breath away. She's never seen this part of the Haunted Forest before; it seems like it shouldn't even be real. The trees give way to soft grass scattered with perfumed and colorful wildflowers which turns into soft sand that the water laps at gently. Jaime bounds down to the water's edge and brushes his hand along the top and nods. 

“We should rinse off,” he says, pulling off his shirt. She realizes she's never actually seen him with his shirt off and it's almost too much when he turns, bare-chested and gleaming, the spray of golden hair, his rosy nipples, the shadowed dip above his hips, barely visible over the low waistband of his jeans. She didn't realize how much decency work even his tightest t-shirts were doing when she sees him like _this_ , all casual sexiness. She is ravenous for him in a moment, to run her hands along the curve of his shoulders, to touch and taste and smell him. He starts undoing his jeans and she cannot look away until he's standing there naked and she thinks maybe staring like this might be rude.

She still doesn't look away. 

Before her eyes she watches his cock thicken and swell and reach out and up and she is suddenly very aware of the aching emptiness inside her she wants him to fill. 

“Come on,” he says, and he wades into the lake. 

This is a decision, she thinks, that feels important. Which is silly, they're just rinsing off in a beautiful, likely chilly lake, but they're doing it naked and they're doing it happy and comfortable and having watched each other orgasm. They're really going to test the limits of these unicorn purity rules. 

She undresses all the way, too, and when he emerges from the water, wiping his hands over his hair, he smiles happily. Brienne sort of awkwardly hugs her arms around herself and walks to the water's edge and touches her toe to the water. It's cold. She gasps a little and he snorts. 

“Just get in, you big baby.”

Ah, so he's the same as he was. That's good, she knows how to deal with that, naked or not. She splashes into the water until she's up to her neck and her body tightens at the cold, but it's warm outside and inside her body and it feels good. They spend a few minutes not talking, just enjoying the peace. Brienne loves water; it makes her feel normal-sized, able to buoy even her body. She feels like a seal, like a shark as she dives under and swims along. When she surfaces, she doesn't see Jaime, and then there's an explosion of water behind her and he splashes her with what feels like half the lake. 

He's howling with laughter when she turns and she sweeps her long arm in a huge arc and returns all the water and more straight into his face. The opening volleys in a truly epic war. 

They're all over the lake, swimming, splashing, laughing so the sound bounces around and off the trees standing guard in a circle. Eventually Jaime swims up while she's splashing futilely at him and he dunks her under. While she's there she grabs his leg and pulls him down, too, and then uses his thighs to kick off and start swimming. But he's still so fast and so strong that he grabs her around the waist before she barely sets off and pulls her hard against him and he's hard against her ass and they both go still. 

She feels his chest heaving against her back and when she instinctively rolls her bottom back against him he gasps and attaches himself to her neck like a lamprey; he'll leave a mark like one, too, purple and tender and she thinks she'll take a picture of it when he does so she can remember this moment, his hands cupping her small breasts, his cock sliding between the flesh of her ass, the green, green trees against the blue, blue sky, her heart very happy, happier than she's ever felt it, light and soft and free all at once. 

And the unicorn standing at the lake's edge, watching them. 

“Oh, fuck,” she says and he nods against her neck like yes, yes, that's exactly what we're going to do, but she presses the palm of her hand to his forehead and forcibly lifts his head so he can see what she sees. 

“Oh fuck,” he parrots reverently. 

The unicorn is, well, it's a unicorn: horse body, big giant horn sticking out of its head, shaggy hair at its hooves, flowing mane and tail. Exactly what all the sigils and pictures in children's books would lead her to expect. But it's none of those things at all. It's pale, Jaime got that right, but it's not white. It's moonlight made flesh. Its eyes are stars. Its mane and tail are the wind in physical form. Its horn is a long, spiraling crystal of magic. It's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. More beautiful even than Jaime, and he'd agree with her, she knows. 

The two of them watch the unicorn and the unicorn watches them and Brienne is aware that there is something very intelligent behind those starlight eyes. Now that the unicorn is here, she sees how idiotic it is to think a creature like this would care if she's had sex. Jaime is right: purity has nothing to do with virginity. She allows herself a little thrill of relief at that and then she's focused on the task at hand. 

“Let me go,” she whispers and he releases her immediately. 

Brienne walks slow and steady and then stops when the water is waist high. The unicorn just watches, considering her, judging her, but not like humans do, not by how she looks. She can feel it's eyes on her heart. 

The unicorn throws its head, and she thinks it's asking her to follow, so she walks towards it but it looks past her to Jaime and does the motion again. Brienne hesitates. 

“Does it want me to leave?” he asks and he sounds a little hurt, but open to doing what he needs to. 

“I think it wants you to come, too.” 

He stands and moves next to Brienne and the unicorn nods its head. She gets the sense that if it could talk it would be saying, “ugh, _humans_.” She doesn't blame it. 

Jaime takes her hand and they walk to shore, the unicorn moving into the trees fast enough to keep a safe distance between them but not so fast they could lose it. As they walk by their things, Jaime bends to grab his clothes and his sword and Brienne hisses, “leave it.” 

“I'll leave the clothes, but-”

“Leave all of it.” 

Jaime stands and the unicorn is watching them from the deep forest shadows. She's afraid it won't wait long. 

“We won't have any weapons. What if it attacks you?” 

He's worried about _her_. Because he's stupid and noble and aggravating and oh gods she loves him, this is terrible and wonderful. 

“It will be all right,” she promises him and herself both and he listens because when it matters he always does. 

Jaime grabs her hand again, protective, and he catches her gaze. “If anything happens to you, I don't care what the fuck I promised Catelyn.” Brienne can't help smiling and she kisses him softly. 

“Don't be an idiot, we'll both be dead by then, we've got no clothes,” she says and then tugs him onward. 

The unicorn leads them into the woods for a few minutes and Brienne hopes they can make it back, she doesn't want to leave the Fable Zone naked and also she really likes her sword. It stops in a small clearing that Brienne is certain they should have walked by but if they had she would have remembered because every color here is its most vivid, true self. The sun is almost too bright, the grass is candy green, the purple flowers are heartbreakingly lovely. It's like she's put on glasses and is seeing the world for the first time. By the way Jaime is staring around owl-eyed and blinking, he must be seeing it, too. 

Here in this too-real meadow the unicorn is unbearable. She can't even look directly at it, it's like staring into the sun, if the sun had four legs and was the personification of love. 

“Shoot,” Brienne says, loudly, and Jaime flinches. 

“What?” he whispers. 

“I forgot the container for the horn milk.” 

The unicorn shakes it's mane – she gets the very strong sense it's rolling it's eyes at her – and then it points towards the purple flowers, she thinks, because she still can't look at it without feeling like she's dying. 

She sees now that the purple flowers are horn-shaped and it all becomes very clear: just like milk of the poppy, milk of these flowers, likely called unicorn horns, will cure Bran. Brienne exhales in relief because she's certain if she had to touch the unicorn she'd never come back to herself. Hurriedly she bends to pick a few and after glancing up for permission, a few more. 

Brienne cradles the flowers in one arm and then takes Jaime's hand with her free one. “Thank you,” she says and the unicorn makes a vaguely nodding movement. 

“Now what do we do?” Jaime whispers. 

“We leave, I think.” She doesn't want to. This place is more real than anywhere she's ever been. It reminds her of how her heart had felt just minutes before when they were laughing together in the lake. It reminds her of love. 

_Ah_ , she thinks. _I understand_. 

Brienne is the one who leads them out of the meadow, back into the trees that all seem dull and blurry until she looks at Jaime and everything slides into focus again, a little too sharp, a little too much, but perfect all the same. They quietly gather their things and start back towards the Gate. Though they've walked for days, they arrive at the gate in a couple of hours and Brienne is glad. She doesn't want to have sex for the first time in the Fable Zone. 

It's getting dark so she stops at the motel from the first night and Jaime climbs out of the truck and comes back with a single key. She nods in agreement and they carry their things into the room. 

Jaime says, nervous, “You don't have to do this” and Brienne laughs a little. 

“You're a dummy,” she tells him lovingly, because she knows but he doesn't quite understand all of it, not yet. The tortoise wins again. She sees when he gets it, though, it comes over him like a starburst and then his hands are in her hair and his lips are on hers and she's sinking into him. 

They move to the bed, stumbling, laughing into each other's mouths when they fall more than flow down on top of it. He's scrabbling at her clothes and she's tugging at his and she thought it would be somehow slower and sweeter than this but it's been a week (years) of wanting to touch him and now she can and she's not going to wait a second just because first times should be romantic. Romance is wiping someone else's leg clean, it's having a water fight in a clear lake, it's seeing someone for who they are and not what they look like. She's got plenty of romance. She wants his body and he, miraculously, wants hers. 

He doesn't even have his shirt off when she yanks down his pants and guides his cock to her cunt and he whines a little, high in his throat when she urges him inside. He hesitates, blunt and hard and much bigger than her fingers but she feels herself opening to him. 

“You're sure?” he says, kissing her temple, her forehead, her broken nose. 

“Jaime,” she gasps, “yes, yes, I'm sure. I want you.” 

“All of me?” he asks and she understands what that question means because she wonders it about herself, too. _All_ of me – all of these parts, the irritating ones and the good ones, the Fable Zone dreaminess and the rest-of-reality stupidity? 

“Yes,” she says and he slides into her and it hurts a little as he stretches her out and she worries for a second, for the first time in her life, that he's too big and she's too small but she expands and then she's just full and he's breathing hot into her hair and whispering, “fuck, you're so-” and he moves a little and she moans and he says, “Brienne.” 

He fucks her slowly at first even though she wants him fast but he's on top – this time, but not the next, she vows – so she lets him set the pace even though she feels like she's falling apart, like he's using his tongue and his cock to unravel her, one thread at a time until she's just a puddle, all grasping fingers and wet cunt and her body lost somewhere to the feeling of him sliding slick in and against her. She wraps her hands in his shirt and tugs him up a little and she kisses him as he stutters and groans and loses himself, too, because if they're going to be lost it's better when they're together. 

Jaime shivers when he slips out of her and she does too and they kiss again when he settles next to her, his arms and legs wrapped around her body like a very warm and clingy blanket. 

“I was right the whole time,” he says. 

She blinks and pulls her head back to look at him. He's smirking, victorious. She shoves him a little and he laughs. 

“Don't get too full of yourself,” she warns him. 

“I've also ruined you for other men,” he announces and she smothers him with her pillow. He is still so Jaime. She's glad. Mostly. 

The drive back the next day takes eight hours and feels like one. Jaime holds her hand the entire way, the flowers filling the cab with a scent that reminds her of sunshine on a lake, of a creature more real than they are. It's late when she pulls up to WFRI again and he kisses her hand. 

“I have a hotel room,” he says and she licks her lips but shakes her head. 

“I should take these to Catelyn.” Her mentor will be thrilled at Brienne's success, and she's eager to give the woman her hope back. 

“All right. I'll see you later?”

“I'm sure you will.” Even if he leaves tonight they will find each other again. They always do. Jaime kisses her hand once more and then he's out of her car and into his and she watches him drive away. 

Catelyn is sleepy-eyed when Brienne knocks on her door but she gasps at the purple, horn-shaped flowers and reaches out to touch them with trembling fingers. “You've done it,” the older woman whispers and then she starts to cry. 

Brienne falls asleep on Catelyn's couch after comforting her, and she wakes in the morning and wonders why the air is so stale, wonders why Jaime is not at her side, until she remembers. She smiles a little and heads into the office. She has something she needs to research. 

She finds it in the book _Flowers of the Fable Zone_ and she reads what she somehow already knew, that kissing by fairy flowers is a promise of love eternal. Jaime was right, she has to admit. Purity was never of the body, or of the mind, but of the heart, and love the most elemental form. When it's reflected back by the one to whom it's given, it becomes a sunbeam, a rainbow, moonlight made flesh. No one person could ever find a unicorn, she knows. It requires two. 

She's staring at the book and considering whether she even wants to present this at the next Hunters-Gatherers con when she hears, “Miss me, wench?” and he is there, he is _here_ and they're kissing and this time instead of lying she says, "yes."


End file.
